Daily Digest 12/13 - Tensions Escalate Between Russia And Turkey, The Great Economic Collapse is Happening

Economy

He said the gun was delivered as a semi-automatic but he did not know whether someone had turned it into an automatic after delivery. Brzakovic said his factory exports up to 25,000 hunting and sports guns every year, and all were delivered legally. The particular gun in question was exported to the Florida-based Century International Arms, but it is not clear how the gun got back to Europe.

Every Western government and Washington’s Asian vassal states are totally under the control of private corporations and private interest groups. The corporations govern, and they are in the process of institutionalizing their governance with the Trans-Pacific and Trans-Atlantic Partnerships. The purpose of these “partnerships” is to make global corporations higher than the laws of the “sovereign” countries in which they do business.

The energy crash is certain to worsen. The news last week that OPEC is not going to lower output, makes it clear that OPEC is in the energy price war for the duration. Driven by the Saudis, OPEC nations will assure oversupply until they see several major oil companies in the US collapse. To lower output now and raise oil prices would be to have suffered a year of pain for absolutely nothing. OPEC is committed to breaking the US fracking industry, and it’s doing a pretty good job of it. That means energy stocks and oil prices are down for the long term. The price of oil now matches its lowest point in the Great Recession.

The TPP is part of a triad of trade agreements that includes the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA). TiSA, by calling for the privatization of all public services, is a mortal threat to the viability of the U.S. Postal Service, public education and other government-run enterprises and utilities; together these operations make up 80 percent of the U.S. economy. The TTIP and TiSA are still in the negotiation phase. They will follow on the heels of the TPP and are likely to go before Congress in 2017.

Documents seen by the Guardian have uncovered longstanding ethical and privacy issues about the way academics hoovered up personal data by accessing a vast set of US Facebook profiles, in order to build sophisticated models of users’ personalities without their knowledge.

The Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, who was in Rome for talks on Libya, said Ankara was investigating the matter and would make a statement once it had more information. He also reiterated Turkey’s position that it wanted to resolve its difficulties with Russia. “We want to solve the tension with dialogue,” he saidin comments broadcast by TRT Turk.

Writing for The Intercept, Lee Fang notes that “[t]he call took place right around the same time Trump announced his intention to bar Muslim immigrants from entering the United States, suggesting the CBS chief didn’t know about that yet.”

That seemed to please the residents evidently tired of Big Solar's relentless intrusion into their community. One resident, Mary Hobbs, said her home was surrounded by solar farms and has lost its value. That led Ars to the satellite view of Woodland on Google Maps, to see if we could verify the veracity of Hobbs' claims. This publication will not look the other way as Big Solar attempts to railroad the good citizens of small-town America. Alas, when we looked at the satellite view we didn't see any sign of solar farms as we perused the verdant fields and woods of the aptly named Woodland.

Gold & Silver

Article suggestions for the Daily Digest can be sent to [email protected]. All suggestions are filtered by the Daily Digest team and preference is given to those that are in alignment with the message of the Crash Course and the "3 Es."

Join the discussion

1 Comment

The article says "Driven by the Saudis, OPEC nations will assure oversupply until they see several major oil companies in the US collapse."

I doubt it. I suspect the event the Saudis are waiting for is a Russian economic meltdown.

If the Saudis led a reduction in output sufficient to bring prices back to the $100 per barrel neighborhood their net income would skyrocket. I ran a simple calculation and their net income would be better than it is today if they did the entire output reduction themselves, not even requiring other OPEC and non-OPEC producers to reduce simultaneously.

This is not a manufacturing industry, it's resource extraction. It's all about income. The Saudis know they are sitting on a finite quantity of oil. When it's all pumped they have no more income. Getting the maximum amount they can for their finite supply is in their best interests. Whether shale oil is pumped now or when prices go back up doesn't make a difference to them.